Black Narcissus
poster
Directed by	Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Written by	Rumer Godden {novel) Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Produced by	Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Starring	Deborah Kerr Sabu David Farrar Flora Robson
Cinematography	Jack Cardiff
Edited by	Reginald Mills
Music by	Brian Easdale
Distributed by	General Film Distributors
Release dates	26 May Template:Fy (UK) 13 August Template:Fy (US)
Running time	100 minutes
Country	Template:FilmUK
Language	Transclusion error: ((En)) is only for use in File namespace. Use ((lang-en)) or ((in lang\|en)) instead.
Budget	£280,000 (est.)

Black Narcissus (Template:Fy) is a film by the British director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel of the same name by Rumer Godden. It is a psychological drama about the emotional tensions within a convent of nuns in an isolated Himalayan valley, and stars Deborah Kerr, Sabu, David Farrar and Flora Robson, and features Esmond Knight, Jean Simmons and Kathleen Byron.

Plot

A group of Anglican nuns travels to a remote location in the Himalayas (the Palace of Mopu, near Darjeeling) to set up a school and hospital and 'tame' the local people and environment, by conversion and gardening, only to find themselves increasingly seduced by the sensuality of their surroundings in a converted seraglio, and by the local British agent Dean (David Farrar). Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), the Sister in charge, is attempting to forget a failed romance at home in Ireland. Tensions mount as Dean's laid-back charm makes an impression on Clodagh, but also attracts the mentally unstable Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), who becomes pathologically jealous of Clodagh, resulting in a nervous breakdown and a violent climax. In a subplot, 'the Young General' (Sabu), heir to the throne of a princely Indian state who has come to the convent for his education, becomes infatuated with a lower caste dancing girl (Jean Simmons); the film's title refers to a perfume that he has imported from England.

Cast

Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh
Flora Robson as Sister Philippa
Jean Simmons as Kanchi
David Farrar as Mr. Dean
Sabu as The Young General
Esmond Knight as The Old General
Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth
Jenny Laird as Sister Honey
Judith Furse as Sister Briony
May Hallatt as Angu Ayah
Shaun Noble as Con, Clodagh's Childhood Sweetheart
Eddie Whaley Jr. as Joseph Anthony, Young Interpreter
Nancy Roberts as Mother Dorothea
Ley On as Phuba, Dean's Servant

Production

The film was made primarily at Pinewood Studios, but some scenes were shot in Leonardslee Gardens, West Sussex, the home of an Indian army retiree which had appropriate trees and plants for the Indian setting.^[1]^[2] The film makes extensive use of matte paintings and large scale landscape paintings to suggest the mountainous environment of the Himalayas, as well as some scale models for motion shots of the convent. Powell said later, 'Our mountains were painted on glass. We decided to do the whole thing in the studio and that's the way we managed to maintain colour control to the very end. Sometimes in a film its theme or its colour are more important than the plot.' Of the three principal Indian roles, only the Young General was played by an ethnic Indian; the roles of Kanchi and the Old General were performed by white actors in makeup. The role of Kanchi was a change indeed for 'the demure Miss Simmons.' Kanchi, 17, is described by Rumer Godden as ' a basket of fruit, piled high and luscious and ready to eat. Though she looks shyly down, there is something steady and unabashed about her; the fruit is there to be eaten, she does not mean it to rot.' On landing the part Simmons told her mother she had been given a part in which she had to have 'oomph'. 'The Indian extras were cast from workers at the docks in Rotherhithe.^[3] For the costumes the art director Junge had three main colour schemes. The nuns were always in the white habits that he designed from a medley of medieval types. These white robes of heavy material stressed the nuns other-worldliness amid the exotic native surroundings. The chief native characters were robed in really brilliant hues, particularly the General and his young nephew aglitter in jewels and rich silks. Other native characters brought into the film merely as 'atmosphere' were clad in more sombre hues, with the usual native dress of the Nepalese, Bhutanese and Tibetan peoples toned down to prevent overloading the eye with brilliance.

The version of the film originally shown in the United States had scenes depicting flashbacks of Sister Clodagh's life before becoming a nun edited out at the behest of Catholic Legion of Decency.^[4]

Crew

Cinematography by Jack Cardiff
Original music by Brian Easdale
Production Design by Alfred Junge
Costume Design by Hein Heckroth
Film Editing by Reginald Mills
Special Effects by W. Percy Day, Peter Ellenshaw

Historical context

Black Narcissus was released only a few months before India achieved independence in August 1947. Film critic Dave Kehr has suggested that the final images of the film, as the nuns abandon the Himalayas and process down the mountain, could have been interpreted by British viewers in 1947 as "a last farewell to their fading empire"; he suggests that it is not an image of defeat "but of a respectful, rational retreat from something that England never owned and never understood".^[5] It should be noted, however, that the story in the film quite closely follows that of the book, which was written in 1939.

Critical responses

In 'The Great British Picture Show' the writer George Perry stated ; 'Archers films looked better than they were - the location photography in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff in Black Narcissus was a great deal better than the story and lifted the film above the threatening banality.' In sharp contradistinction the critic Ian Christie wrote in the Radio Times, in the 1980s that, ' unusually for a British film from the emotionally frozen forties the melodrama works so well it almost seems as if Powell and Pressburger survived the slings and barbs of contemporary criticism to find their ideal audience in the 1980s.' Marina Warner, introducing the film on BBC2 (on a nun themed film evening, with Therese), called it a masterpiece. ' The suggestions continually hover on the brink of hyperbole. The film achieves its extraordinary impact by daring so much against all bounds of decorum, far in excess of realism. The crimson lipstick Sr. Ruth applies turns her into a kind of werewolf, the kittenish wiles of Jean Simmons also convey, in a different mode, a fantasy of female sexual appetite. The crazed and sometimes cruel flapping of Angu Ayah adds yet another flourish to the portrait of female hysteria. In this convent, this house of women, all the women are mad.' 'Again and again Powell submits Sr. Clodagh to visitants from the world of chaos and passion she has forsworn in order to touch her, shake her, break her down. First and foremost David Farrar's Mr. Dean, all bare, hairy legs, insolence and roguish eyes, erupts into her convent, the spirit of maleness embodied. The holy father in the grounds issues a mute challenge to her faith. Luxury, desire, pleasure, humiliation all thrust in upon her in the forms of the young General with his emeralds and perfumes, and of Kanchi, the young Jean Simmons in dark panstick with a jewel in her nose, and Kathleen Byron's famous pent up, ravening portrayal of Sr. Ruth finally holds up a mirror of the abyss into which Sr. Clodagh too might fall, and indeed only just escapes in more ways than one. As in Clarissa, Samuel Richardson's classic novel about prolonged seduction and embattled virtue, Powell pits the chaste and steely Deborah Kerr against all these assailants and watches her thrash about with relish. While Lovelace had to rape Clarissa to achieve his end, Powell only has to show that Mr. Dean was right and Sr. Clodagh was mistaken. The ending of Black Narcissus vindicates the world against the cloister, libido against superego, male against female.' In Michael Powell's own view this was the most erotic film he ever made. "It is all done by suggestion, but eroticism is in every frame and image from beginning to end. It is a film full of wonderful performances and passion just below the surface, which finally, at the end of the film, erupts."

Awards

Jack Cardiff won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography and a Golden Globe Award for Best Cinematography
Alfred Junge won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction
Deborah Kerr won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress ^[6]

References

Notes

^ Michael Powell (1986). A Life in Movies. Heinemann. p. 562. ISBN 0-434-59945-X.
^ Sarah Street (2005). Black Narcissus, TCM British Film Guide. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-84511-046-3.
^ Michael Powell, commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD, ch.6
^ [1] NY Times review of Black Narcissus
^ Dave Kehr, 'Black Narcissus', The Criterion Collection official website.
^ "NY Times: Black Narcissus". NY Times. Retrieved 2008-12-20.

Bibliography

Godden, Rumer. Black Narcissus. London: Peter Davies, 1939.
Powell, Michael. A Life in Movies: An Autobiography. London: Heinemann, 1986. ISBN 0-434-59945-X.
Powell, Michael. Million Dollar Movie. London: Heinemann, 1992. ISBN 0-434-59947-6.
Street, Sarah. Black Narcissus. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. ISBN 1-845-11046-3.
Vermilye, Jerry. The Great British Films. Citadel Press, 1978. ISBN 080650661X. 112pp.